Quiet day. Nothing out of the ordinary. I'm
on a street corner downtown. The sun fucked off weeks ago, fired for
incompetence and dereliction of duty. It's seasonal work, so there's nothing you
can do.
Shoppers stroll, babies wail, mothers
lug bags and corral kids in and out of department stores.
Out on the street, big screens advertise cough drops and undergarments
for bosomed girls under twenty, and there are pedestrians and short trees
strapped to wooden poles.
Ahead of me on the pavement a wreck of a
man sells magazines. A user, a 12-year veteran. He shakes all over, but his
right hand - his work hand - is steady. Five years ago he sucker-punched his dad for the family China which
he pawned for a few grams. He has since found gainful employment and has never
missed a day's work. His dog Charlie has seen two continents and eight months
on a freight barge bound for the Philippines. Mange, conjunctivitis and a limp,
but otherwise a happy mutt with a good wag in his tail.
The sun makes a fifteen second cameo
appearance. A glorious goddamn burst of light. The street stops in its tracks
and everyone looks up as though visited by an apparition from above. Men gape
and women drop their children's hand.
Soon the clouds return. And all is peaceful
again.
I enter a cafe. My usual. I flail my hand
for a Grande. The 37-year-old who takes my order speaks fluent English, but if
you listen close you'll hear an accent,
something Balkan. And if you get to know her, if you spend months getting her
to open up, if you never judge, never pry, never get "curious", if
you just keep your piehole shut and listen, she might tell you about the three
year siege she endured in her home country, age fifteen, and the men with
"visitation rights". She might tell you. Or she might tell you to
fuck off just the same.
"Black or white today, Lui?"
"Black."
There is fine coffee in this establishment.
There are families and friends, and
dogs, and people who come to work on their laptops. There are lawyers, like
the balding fellow on the corner table (three kids force-medicated under
"child protection" policies, locked in a rampaging lawsuit: the State
against Ibrahim X). He comes here to listen
to innocent chatter. To daydream. To do nothing. To look out the window at passersby
and those trees strapped to wooden poles, steadied in the wind.
Me, I wait for you.
